


A Good Thing

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - In Your Heart Shall Burn, Enemies to Friends, Eventual Romance, F/M, One Shot, References to Depression, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 09:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17826215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Being graced by the attention of Lady Josephine Montilyet is a good thing. Particularly for a Tevinter magister in disgrace, who is just about done with this wretched world that offered no second chance for his family, and will soon be destroyed by his master.





	A Good Thing

**Author's Note:**

> The Lavellan here is the same as in the Like Water series.

Clipboard in hand, expression focused and sharply businesslike, she enters the undercroft of Haven’s Chantry without warning, her gilded garments shimmering like condensed sunshine against the dungeon’s sullen grey. Almost like an apparition from the Fade - which would not have surprised him, given his state of flickering hazily between waking and dream, not knowing, not caring, what day it is, when last he ate, or which way is up and which is down. But the Fade feeds on memories, on past experiences - and he has never seen her before; he has no recollection of this nobly chiselled profile or keen, intelligent eyes, or sun-warmed skin.

He does recognize her name, though, when she introduces herself, quill poised and little finger extended. It is a vague echo, a reminder of events that he also wishes to have been a hallucination. Which they were not.

‘Greetings, milord,’ she says, perfectly poised, and he almost barks out a laugh at her politeness, so very meaningless now.

'I am Josephine Montilyet, ambassador of the Inquisition; we have corresponded previously, to arrange the… meeting in Redcliffe. Since the Fereldan crown has given us custody over you, in addition to the rebel mages, I would very much like to take your personal statement of what happened and file it with the reports of the Herald, Lord Dorian, and the others’.

'Why?’ he thinks he can hear the question escape his lips, like a huff of strained breath.

'Because I believe it is important to see the full picture,’ she says earnestly, and he almost smiles. A politician with the outlook of a scholar… He knew someone like that, once. A reflection in his mirror in another world.

Blinking the heavy veil off his eyes, he keeps himself awake and alert for as long as she asks her questions, with quill dancing over the paper to the sound of his hoarse voice, and with large warm eyes glancing up at him now and again, widening silently at the details of his grizzly bargain with the Elder One.

He tells her all there is to tell about his involvement with the Venatori. With the dry indifference of a researcher reporting the results of dissecting some marshland critter; with no embellishments, no excuses, no rants about a glorious future for his homeland.

The time for that has passed. The time for everything has passed.

Before she leaves, she clears her throat, for a rather long time, and thanks him for his honesty - a formality, for certain… And then, her fingers gripping tight at her Clipboard’s edge, she adds, with the quietness and clarity of those crisp southern autumn mornings,

'I am sorry about your son, milord’.

He frowns, recoiling at these words, and feels something dark and tangled and full of wounding barbs stir, slithering, inside of him, ready to lash out. But the thorny tendrils are put to rest when he looks up into her eyes, and lingers in silence… Which is eventually broken by a voice that, again, appears to be his, but is only uncertainly registered by his mind. Distant. Alien. Warped.

'Have you a family of your own, Ambassador?’

'I do, milord. Parents and siblings. They are safely back in Antiva’.

'Good,’ he says simply. To himself, he notes that this safety will not last, that soon enough, the Elder One will prevail, and the Inquisition will lose everything in the coming storm… But for now, he is too weak to gloat.

And what would be the point, really? What good will it do him, defeated and disgraced and drained, if he mulls over how another family will be destroyed, the way his was? If he brings tears to these eyes of hers?

***

His next visitor is Dorian, with shards of steel in his gaze and a shadow on  his brow… As if he were the angry, disappointed teacher facing a student after an irreparable blunder.

'I did not want to see you again,’ he declares bluntly. 'There are so many memories to be ruined… by this… that even my brilliant mind cannot contain them. But - but the Ambassador called me aside, and told me that being in the company of your countryman would lighten up your final days; and I agreed to come, for Felix’s sake more than anything… Although I still cannot see how even my illustrious presence would lighten up anything about you - not with all the muck on your clothes and the atrocious stubble you are sporting’.

He passes his hand over his chin, the hardened prickle suddenly reminding him that he does yet have a physical form. Not for long, though, he does not think.

'They will execute me, won’t they?’

As Dorian braces to answer his question - just as blunt as the boy’s initial greeting - his mask of unforgiving derision behind to crack apart.

'I… I don’t… I can’t tell for certain…’ he stutters, the iciness of his gaze melting into a moist glow that is indescribably crushing to see in the eyes of Dorian, of all people. Maker, he really did break his heart, didn’t he? And Felix’s.

'I can’t really go about chatting with southerners, being a suspicious Vint… But I heard that the Ambassador is advocating for a proper trial… She might be alone in this, though. And either way… Even a trial will probably lead to…’

He meets Dorian’s awkward gesture, somewhere in the region of his throat, with a nod of understanding.

'Good,’ he mouths.

'I am so very tired. And what I did hardly deserves mercy, does it?’

'No,’ Dorian mutters, leaning in and gripping at the bars. 'But… I will miss you, you foolish old man. I will… miss both of you’.

'At least my family will be together again,’ he whispers - and remembers another voice speaking of family. A young, lovely voice, with a melodious Antivan accent. A voice that, albeit fleetingly, distracted him from the husk he had become.

'Promise me that you will not… will not watch me fall, Dorian. And keep the Ambassador away from the execution site, if you can’.

***

Inevitably, his despondent expectations for the future come true. The storm is here, splashing against the flimsy thatch-roofed buildings with its waves of bleeding red and seething, blinding orange, turning the entirety of Haven’s valley into a gigantic, roaring brazier.

He is dragged out to face the glow of this brazier (which makes his eyes break out into a sweat of salty drops) by Dorian and some sort of one-eyed oxman thug, whom the boy is remarkably friendly with, friendly enough even for a broken, tired prisoner to notice. The Elder One is still hunting the Herald, they tell him (and so much more crudely, now that he is deprived of potential mage recruits); his forces have ravaged the village in search of the Anchor’s thief, and the survivors are currently fleeing along some hidden mountain path.

And apparently, in the midst of the broiling, smoking, screaming chaos, Dorian and the oxman - The Iron Bull, he calls himself, emphasis on the article - have stayed behind to ensure that the evacuation included the foolish old man from the dungeons. Needless scheme, really. And a dangerous one, too: he only slows them both down as they race up the rocky slope, half-smothered by white masses of frozen water and pursued by a pack of rasping, ravenous creatures that carry a heavy, spiky shell of throbbing red crystals and, at some angles, even appear almost human.

It is all a blur after that: dragging himself after Dorian and The Bull, falling further and further behind, throwing himself in the grinding, heaving crimson heart of the crystal pack - because if he was not left to rot like he should have, might as well die covering the escape of those who deserve to live… Then, lifting his pounding, cannonball-like head to see the Herald, the elven thief that he tried and failed to kill. Covered in soot from head to toe and sporting a nasty stripe of ripped-up skin and mangled flesh across her forehead, amid the twists and loops of vine-like tattoos, but otherwise perfectly fine, chirpy even. With about as many arrows missing from her quiver as there are glinting crimson corpses around them. Because apparently, nothing kills the woman. At least being enraged about it is no longer part of his job.

'We meet again, magister,’ she tells him calmly as she helps him up. 'How about this time, we work together, hmm? The journey through the mountains is deadly on one’s own - and Josephine will be rather cross with me if I bring her news of her… how do humans call it… protégé’s demise’.

Deciding that he must have imagined that last part, he follows her mechanically through the wet, howling, face-slashing murk. Time and reality around him moosh into a blur again, and the next time he can think clearly is when he is awakened by a veritable operatic chorus of snores and realizes that he is in a tent packed full of sleeping Templars - because of course the southerners would shove a suspicious mage among their Templars - and the stars twinkle serenely through the gap between the canvas flaps, casting a muted bluish light on a sprawling caravan under the flaming eye banner, sheltered by a massive outcrop somewhere among the mountains.

His wrists are chained, as he discovers when he tries to pass them over his puffed-up, sleepy face; his ankles are as well. But he can still walk, with some effort - which he does, stepping cautiously in the narrow patches of trampled snow between the bedrolls, and keeping out of sight of the few Templars that are still awake.  

He has to leave the tent; he is compelled to - because there is another sound, breaking through the symphony of snores. A voice. Familiar voice. Young, lovely, Antivan voice. Sobbing.

Her tent is, thankfully, not far - and when he peeks in, not even entirely certain what is pushing him to do this, he finds her bundled up on her bedding, hugging her knees, the fur pelt covers threatening to slip off her twitching shoulders.

The first thing he does is cast a subtle telekinetic spell (the most he can manage in these manacles) to wrap the pelt around her properly - and the sizzle of green around her shivering form alerts her to his presence.

'Did I wake you, milord?’ she asks, breathing in to compose herself. 'I really did not intend to, and I realize that this is a most inappropriate state to see me in. It’s just that… As Haven burned, I saw our workmen jump to the defense of what they’d built… And now, every time I close my eyes… I can hear the screams’.

'I am… I am sorry,’ he says, those tangled tendrils locking around his heart again. Only this time, it’s not anger. It’s regret. And guilt.

It was his people that brought this upon Haven, after all. His people that bathed the hapless, unsuspecting village in blood, and pockmarked it with smoking cinders, while she - and so many others like her, like Dorian, like Felix - watched, horror-struck, demons of fear leeching gleefully off their stunned minds. This is not what he wanted. Back when he yet had will to want, reason to want… To want anything but the icy calm of oblivion.

Although… Although, right now, he does want something else. He wants her to stop crying, to steady her breath, to drift off to a sleep free of nightmares. It is a small thing to want, and pathetic in the grand scheme of things - because no matter how you look at the Elder One’s future, as a dawn of triumph for Tevinter or a reign of waking horrors, it will still come to pass. And yet. And yet.

'Perhaps some small talk will take your mind off this?’ he adds, as he squats clumsily down next to her bedroll (keeping a respectful distance, of course).

'I understand that culturally, your land has a few similarities with mine’.

Her face brightens up; when her eyes meet his, she almost looks delighted.

'Why, milord, I never thought about it this way! But I suppose, being located to the north, Antiva and Tevinter would at least share the same temperaments among their peoples…’

They spend the next hour or saw talking animatedly in hushed voices, comparing the cuisine, the festivals, even the most typical gestures of their homes. The excited tone (which is… rather genuine on his part, because relaxing one’s mind with friendly conversation works both ways) eventually begins to dwindle, however; and at one point, she has to pause and cover her mouth tactfully to suppress a yawn.

'I… I think I will try to sleep again,’ she slurs, instinctively reaching to readjust her bed hair even as her eyes slide shut.

'Good,’ he smiles at her, and his heart clenches suddenly.

For a moment there, he was distracted again. For a moment there, he almost felt happy.


End file.
